The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide

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The Cambridge Shakespeare Guide

Are you studying Shakespeare and looking for a handy summary of plots, characters and interpretations? Or are you a keen theatregoer wanting essential background on the Shakespeare plays you see on stage? Ideal for students and theatre enthusiasts alike, this lively and authoritative guide presents key information, clearly set out, on all Shakespeare’s dramatic and poetic works, covering plots and people, sources, context, performance history and major themes. Ordered alphabetically for easy reference, each play entry features a ‘key facts’ box providing informative and revealing statistics, including a breakdown of each play’s major roles. The guide is illustrated with striking performance photographs throughout, and also provides brief accounts of Shakespeare’s life and language, Shakespeare in print and theatre in Shakespeare’s time. This is an indispensable reference source for all students and theatregoers.

Emma Smith is Fellow and Tutor in English at Hertford College, University of Oxford. She has published a wide range of books and articles on Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, including The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare (2007).

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Emma Smith

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CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521149723

© Cambridge University Press 2012

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2012

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

ISBN 978 0 521 19523 2 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 521 14972 3 Paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of illustrations	vii
Acknowledgements	x
The works	1
All’s Well that Ends Well	3
Antony and Cleopatra	8
As You Like It	13
The Comedy of Errors	18
Coriolanus	24
Cymbeline, King of Britain	30
Hamlet	35
Julius Caesar	41
King Henry IV Part 1	47
King Henry IV Part 2	52
King Henry V	57
King Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3	62
King Henry VIII, or All is True	69
King John	75
King Lear	81
King Richard II	87
King Richard III	93
Love’s Labour’s Lost	98
Macbeth	104
Measure for Measure	110
The Merchant of Venice	116
The Merry Wives of Windsor	121
A Midsummer Night’s Dream	126
Much Ado About Nothing	132
Othello, the Moor of Venice	138
Pericles	144
The Phoenix and the Turtle	149
The Rape of Lucrece	151
Romeo and Juliet	156
The Sonnets and A Lover’s Complaint	162
The Taming of the Shrew	169
The Tempest	175
Timon of Athens	180
Titus Andronicus	185
Troilus and Cressida	190
Twelfth Night, or What You Will	195
The Two Gentlemen of Verona	201
The Two Noble Kinsmen	206
Venus and Adonis	211
The Winter’s Tale	214
The context	219
Shakespeare’s life	221
Shakespeare’s theatre	227
Shakespeare in print	232
Shakespearean apocrypha	235
Shakespeare’s language	237
Further reading	240
Index	242

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Illustrations

1All’s Well that Ends Well starring Judi Dench and Claudie Blakley and directed by Gregory Doran. Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2003. 52Antony and Cleopatra starring Harriet Walter and directed by Gregory Doran. Royal Shakespeare Company production, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2006. 103As You Like It starring Juliet Rylance and Christian Camargo and directed by Sam Mendes. Old Vic Theatre, 2010. 154The Comedy of Errors starring Forbes Masson and Jonathan Slinger and directed by Nancy Meckler. Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2005. 205Coriolanus starring Ralph Fiennes and directed by Jonathan Kent. The Almeida at the Gainsborough Studios, 2000. 266Cymbeline starring Mark Rylance and directed by Mike Alfreds. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2001. 327Hamlet starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart and directed by Gregory Doran. Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2008. 378Julius Caesar starring John Light and Finbar Lynch and directed by Sean Holmes for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2006. 439King Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 starring Greg Vinkler and Jeffrey Carlson and directed by Barbara Gaines. Performed by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2006. 5410King Henry V starring Adrian Lester and directed by Nicholas Hytner. Olivier Theatre, National Theatre, 2003. 5911King Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3 starring Chuk Iwuji and directed by Michael Boyd. Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2006. 6512King Henry VIII starring Antony Byrne and directed by Gregory Thompson. Royal Shakespeare Company production

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for the Complete Works Festival, April 2006–March 2007, Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. © Donald Cooper/Photostage. 7113King John starring Guy Henry and directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2001. 7714King Lear starring Ian McKellen and Romola Garai and directed by Trevor Nunn. Royal Shakespeare Company production, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007. 8315King Richard II starring Kevin Spacey and directed by Trevor Nunn. Old Vic Theatre, 2005. 8916King Richard III starring Jonathan Slinger and directed by Michael Boyd. Royal Shakespeare Company production, Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007. 9517Love’s Labour’s Lost starring Gemma Arterton, Cush Jumbo, Michelle Terry and Oona Chaplin and directed by Dominic Dromgoole. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2007. 10018Macbeth starring Simon Russell Beale, Janet Whiteside, Ann Firbank and Jane Thorne and directed by John Caird. Almeida Theatre, 2005. 10619Measure for Measure starring Angus Wright and Naomi Frederick and directed by Simon McBurney. Lyttelton Theatre, 2005. 11220The Merchant of Venice starring F. Murray Abraham and Kate Forbes and directed by Darko Tresnjak. A Theatre for a New Audience production, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2007. 11821The Merry Wives of Windsor starring Christopher Benjamin, Serena Evans and Sarah Woodward and directed by Christopher Luscombe. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2008. 12322A Midsummer Night’s Dream starring Trystan Gravelle, Caitlin Mottram, Joe Dixon, Sinead Keenan and Oscar Pearce and directed by Gregory Doran. Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2005. 12823Much Ado About Nothing starring Harriet Walter and directed by Gregory Doran. Royal Shakespeare Theatre, 2002. 134

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24Othello starring Eamonn Walker and Zoe Tapper and directed by Wilson Milam. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2007. 14025Pericles starring Brian Protheroe and directed by Adrian Noble. Roundhouse, 2002. 14626Romeo and Juliet starring Nicholas Shaw, Richard O’Callaghan and Laura Donnelly and directed by Timothy Sheader. Open Air Theatre, Regent’s Park, 2008. 15827The Taming of the Shrew starring Dugald Bruce-Lockhart and Simon Scardifield in an all-male cast production directed by Edward Hall. Old Vic, 2007. 17128The Tempest starring Antony Sher and directed by Janice Honeyman. A Baxter Theatre Centre production in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company. Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 2009. 17729Timon of Athens starring Simon Paisley Day and directed by Lucy Bailey. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2008. © Donald Cooper/Photostage. 18230Titus Andronicus starring Douglas Hodge, Richard Riddell, Laura Rees and Sam Alexander, directed by Lucy Bailey. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2006. 18731Troilus and Cressida starring Marianne Oldman and directed by Declan Donnellan. Barbican Theatre, 2008. 19232Twelfth Night starring Derek Jacobi and directed by Michael Grandage. Donmar Warehouse at Wyndham’s Theatre, 2008. 19733The Two Gentlemen of Verona starring Mark Hadfield and John Dougall, directed by Edward Hall. Royal Shakespeare Company, Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1998. 20334The Two Noble Kinsmen starring Jasper Britton and Will Keen, directed by Tim Carroll. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, 2000. 20835The Winter’s Tale starring Ethan Hawke and directed by Sam Mendes. Bridge Project production, Old Vic Theatre, 2009. 216

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Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Katherine Duncan-Jones, and to Sarah Stanton, Rebecca Taylor and the anonymous reader at Cambridge University Press for their comments and corrections. Thanks are also due to Geraint Lewis for his wonderful production photographs.

All Shakespeare quotations and the spelling of characters’ names are taken from the relevant volume of the New Cambridge Shakespeare under the general editorship of Brian Gibbons.

The Key Facts are taken from The RSC Shakespeare: The Complete Works edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (2007), published by Modern Library, an imprint of Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Reproduced with permission from Palgrave Macmillan.

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© Cambridge University Press